You Should Tell Me
by KissTheBoy7
Summary: Despite his best and bravest efforts, Mark is unable to use sheer force of will to get Roger to recognize the chemistry between them. MPOV. Unrequited Marker. Mark/Roger. Oneshot.


**A/N: Unrequited things are making my heart bleed and I just love it so… More Mark abuse for all ya'll, I hope you like it. At least it's not as bad as the last few things I've put him through, right? Right. Okay. Ready? Set. READ. (and review!)**

Disclaimer: _RENT no mine, comprende?_

**You Should Tell Me**

I don't get it. I really don't get it. All I do is dote on him. All I've ever done is take care of him, all I've ever been is his best friend, and what do I get? He ignores me. He broods in his room all day and I don't say a word. He throws things at my head when I check on him sometimes! I have _never_ met someone so moody and simultaneously clingy.

I don't even mind, really. I cherish every minute I spend in his presence. I hold onto every (vulgar) word that he says.

Honestly, it's Roger- I don't expect anything else. I never have. I've resigned myself to a life of pining after my oblivious roommate and it's not as though it hasn't been fulfilling. Everyone looks at me like they know, like I'm some poor soul, so hopelessly in love with someone who will never love me back. I don't want to prove them right.

I'm _happy_, damn it.

I'd just be happier with Roger.

I wish he could see me. I wish that every advance I made on him didn't go right over his head. Every subtle hint, and the not-so-subtle ones too- anything. I would do anything to make him see but maybe he just doesn't want to. I would understand.

I mean, I'm not exactly a catch. I'm too skinny and my hair can't decide what color it is, I dress exclusively in corduroy and button-up plaid, my eyes are so blue that it scares me sometimes when I look in the mirror and I'm absolutely blind without my enormous clunky glasses. Who wants to date a four-eyed ginger without fashion sense? Who wants to kiss someone who's practically a virgin?

Still, I'd appreciate a little attention now and then. At least from him. At the very, very least when I'm practically throwing myself at him, literally sitting in his lap, my arms around his neck while we talk- were we really always that touchy, or doesn't he know what boundaries are? Doesn't he get that I'm not just being friendly, that I'm not just nose to nose for him because he has pretty _eyes?_

Well, he does. Not that that has anything to do with it.

I guess it was a bad idea to move in with someone that I was so instantly enthralled with. I should have known this would happen. I should have known that in six, seven years I would be ready to tear my hair out in frustration as the candles lit all over the loft and the v-neck t-shirts were disregarded, overlooked, as my amazing perfect fascinating roommate took girl after girl after girl that he didn't even know back into his room and went to town.

I wish that I was psychic, but even if I had been I doubt I would have been able to resist putting myself in this bittersweet situation. Isn't there a saying for that? It's better to have loved and lost… Not that I was loved back, and not that I really _lost_ anything, anyone because I never had him in the first place and I couldn't possibly delude myself into thinking I ever will.

Sometimes I lie in bed and let myself imagine, though. I know that it isn't helping me, probably the opposite, but… It's just so tempting. He's so tempting. Roger has always been my weakness, since I met him eighteen and lost in the city slums, a tourist who just never left. I lie there and pick at my holey blankets and stare at the ceiling and it becomes my canvas as I imagine myself into the life that I really wish I had.

All of those days spent waiting, waiting for Roger to come back, waiting to see him now rewarded with a kiss on the lips.

All of those nights spent waiting up just in case he needs me becoming nights spent curled up with Roger, sharing body heat and rubbing our noses together, talking in low, sleepy whispers.

The _other_ bedtime activities. I thought about those things, too, sometimes. I'm only human.

Waking up in the morning would be so much easier if I knew that Roger would be there beside me in bed, waiting with a kiss, maybe a heartfelt "I love you" too while I'm at it.

I guess that it's not healthy to keep dreaming up stories like these of a little domestic love life that will never be. Especially with Roger, especially with me. I guess that I should just close my eyes and go to sleep, but then I'll just dream more of Roger and the cycle will begin again.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. I love Roger whether or not there's any possibility- I love him as a friend, I love him as more, and I just love him to pieces. I'm never going to leave him, not until the day he dies- which might be alarmingly soon. Like the faithful puppy I am, I'll always be right here when he needs me.

It's just that I want it so badly. It's just that it's Roger and he's the exception, he's the only person in the world that could really make me happy.

It's just that I try so hard and he never gives me so much as a second glance.

We're best friends and nothing more and apparently he's happy to keep it that way. I should be, too. I should just suck it up and try to move on. Find a pretty girl, ask her out for a coffee that I probably don't have the money to pay for.

I should stop doing anything and everything, driving myself crazy just for one man's momentary attention.

But I can't.

I already know how the rest of my life is going to go. I'm going to keep on being the rock, being the best friend, practically a brother to him- in his words, of course. I'll remind him to take his AZT and make him eat at least two meals a day and yell at Benny to turn the heat back on.

Then Roger will start coughing. That's usually how it starts. And everything will go downhill from there.

I wonder, will I have the courage to tell him before the hourglass runs out of sand?

I lie in bed and think and think and think and it always comes back to this. This morbid idea, fascination, this question that I can't answer. It's all I can do not to cry.

I never used to cry before Roger.

God, Roger, look what you're doing to me. Why can't you see it? Maybe you're the one who needs glasses.


End file.
